SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1569 (30), Friday, April 30, 2010
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TITLE: No Food, No Toilet In 10-Hour Police Raid
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: About a hundred OMON special task police officers stormed the offices of a major St. Petersburg translation company, barring employees from leaving or going to the toilet for at least ten hours on Thursday.
Masked officers detained about 180 employees of Ego Translating in their office, located at 2 Muchnoi Pereulok in central St. Petersburg, without offering any explanation of who they were or what the reason for the search was, Viktoria Uznanska, vice president of Ego Translating, told The St. Petersburg Times by phone on Thursday.
“The officers, armed with crowbars and guns, isolated the staff in different rooms and refused them access to food, drink and the toilet,” Uznanska said.
“There are two pregnant women among those trapped, and they are not allowed to use the toilet either,” she said.
Uznanska, who managed to escape the building when a local television channel turned up at 3 p.m., said the police had searched the whole office, including employees’ personal belongings. They disconnected all the technical devices and computers in the office and piled them in one place, confiscated the company’s hard drives and did not permit staff to use their cell phones, she said.
Uznanska said that when she managed to reach people in her office by phone at 8 p.m., they were calling for help from the windows of the office. At the time of going to press on Thursday evening, the staff had not been allowed to leave.
Uznanska said that the only information she could obtain about the reason for the search was from local media, who reported that the operation was allegedly being carried out in connection with tax issues.
An unidentified source in the St. Petersburg police told Interfax that the raid was part of an investigation into allegations that Ego Translating had committed tax violations.
The source said that the tax inspectorate had information that gave it reason to suspect the company of tax evasion.
“At the moment they are considering opening a criminal case,” the police source told Interfax.
According to preliminary investigation, the tax evasion scheme was based on the use of fly-by-night firms, it said.
Vyacheslav Stepchenko, spokesman for the city’s police, told The St. Petersburg Times on Thursday night that he was unable to comment on the case due to a lack of information on it.
Uznanska said that the company operated legally and had paid taxes in accordance with the law.
“We work for the city administration, federal projects and a number of major companies such as Pulkovo Airport, General Motors and Toyota, as well as for the Hermitage Museum. Our interpreters have translated at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, for many political leaders such as Barack Obama. Therefore we simply can’t allow ourselves to violate the tax rules,” Uznanska said.
Uznanska said that even if the tax inspectorate had suspicions about the company and needed to search it, they had no right to do so in such a brutal way. She said the search had caused the company’s work to grind to a complete halt, while for some projects, even a 30-minute delay could be a huge problem.
She suggested the real reason behind the search could be either “an attack by competitors or demonstrative action to scare other, smaller, businesses.”
“In any case, their actions are extremely unpleasant and are obviously aimed at demoralizing the company’s employees,” she said.
Ego Translating was founded in 1990, and provides interpreting and translation services in many languages. It employs up to 4,000 in-house and freelance employees.
TITLE: Plushenko’s Poor Attendance Leads to Official Statement
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yevgeny Plushenko on Thursday found himself under fire from the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, which is threatening to strip the medal-winning Olympic figure skater of his seat in the local parliament, where he represents the A Just Russia faction.
The city parliament had originally planned a vote to decide the fate of Plushenko’s mandate, when the assembly’s speaker Vadim Tyulpanov of United Russia intervened on Wednesday, suggesting that the lawmakers send an official notification to Sergei Mironov, the leader of the A Just Russia party.
The letter stated that Plushenko attended only 11 parliament sessions of the 123 that have been held since he was elected to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly in March 2007. The sportsman was present at just two sessions in 2009, and has not participated in any so far this year.
Vyacheslav Makarov, the leader of the United Russia faction in the assembly, noted in the letter that the city budget has to date spent more than 12.5 million rubles ($427,000) on Plushenko’s expenses as a parliamentarian.
“We are asking you, the head of the A Just Russia party and our representative in the Federation Council, to use your political weight and help Yevgeny Plushenko make a decision to either give up his seat in the parliament or seriously engage in the assembly’s activities,” reads the parliament’s statement.
Mironov has 30 days to respond to the statement and take action. If no reaction follows or the parliament is not satisfied with the outcome, the lawmakers are prepared to take the matter further, Tyulpanov said.
“Technically speaking, we have full legal grounds to terminate Plushenko’s mandate: According to the assembly’s charter, the parliament has the right to strip any member of their duties if they are absent from work for more than three months without a decent excuse,” Makarov said.
Immediately upon returning to St. Petersburg from what has been described as Russia’s most disappointing Olympics in history, the Russian figure skater, who won Olympic gold in Turin in 2006 and skated to the Olympic silver medal in Vancouver, told reporters at Pulkovo airport that he intended to quit politics. Yet the sportsman stopped short of actually terminating his membership in the parliament.
“I’m seriously considering giving up my seat in the city parliament and going back to sport, simply because I am quite good at it,” Plushenko told journalists on his return.
Members of the A Just Russia faction have been supportive of Plushenko. Oleg Nilov, head of the A Just Russia faction in the St. Petersburg assembly, said that the skater “must devote himself to a very special mission — he must save Russia’s deteriorating sports from further degradation.”
“Considering Russia’s rather, to say the least, uncharacteristic performance at the recent Winter Olympics, Yevgeny Plushenko, as an outstanding sportsman and one of the ambassadors of the Sochi-2014 Winter Olympic Games, may be required to fully dedicate himself to sport,” Nilov added.
Following Plushenko’s return from Vancouver, the local parliament petitioned the Russian authorities to award Plushenko with an Order of Service to the Fatherland, calling his sporting achievements “truly heroic.” The skater received the order at a special ceremony at the Kremlin on March 15.
TITLE: Police Pay to Be Tripled
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Police officers’ salaries will triple and their work will face tighter public scrutiny under a sweeping overhaul of the country’s police force ordered by President Dmitry Medvedev, officials said Wednesday.
State Duma Deputy Alexander Gurov said the plans mark the biggest reform of the police since the Soviet collapse and compared its urgency with an incident in the 1970s when he shot dead a lion as a young police lieutenant.
The lion, which was named King and had starred in several popular Soviet films, was living with a Moscow family when it got loose. Gurov shot the animal as it was preparing to pounce on a pedestrian on the street.
“The lion is already in the corner, and we have to act fast,” Gurov, a United Russia member who sits on the Duma’s Security Committee, said of the police reform.
“Everything that we did before was not a reform but light patchwork,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Tatyana Moskaltsova, a Duma deputy with United Russia and a retired police major general, said the reform would boost the salaries of police officers to 70,000 rubles ($2,350) a month from the current $600 to $800.
Her announcement echoed that of Moscow police chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev, who said in an interview published Wednesday that a rank-and-file Moscow policeman would earn 60,000 rubles ($2,060) a month by the end of 2011.
Now, Kolokoltsev said, the average Moscow police officer collects about $800 a month in pay. The average national salary for any worker across Russia is about $800 a month, according to the Federal Statistics Service.
“We have to be realists,” Kolokoltsev told Rossiiskaya Gazeta. “Until the conditions of service change, people won’t be lining up to work in the police.”
He said 22,000 employees would be laid off the city’s 98,000-member police force by late 2011.
After a series of scandals involving violent and corrupt police officers grabbed national headlines through most of last year, Medvedev ordered a broad reform of the 1.2 million-member Interior Ministry in December. He demanded that its work force be slashed by 20 percent and salaries increased for the remaining workers. Higher salaries are seen as an incentive to prevent police officers from taking bribes, a widespread practice in Russia.
Medvedev also called for police officers to be relieved of some of their peripheral duties and for improvements to the recruiting process.
Medvedev signed a Feb. 18 decree entrusting the Interior Ministry itself with developing a new law on the police — the legal framework for the reform — and with submitting it to the Duma by year-end. The new legislation will replace a 1991 law that has been criticized by senior police officers as lagging behind the social and legal changes that have occurred over the past two decades.
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev is to discuss the basics of the new legislation with the Duma’s Security Committee on Thursday.
Among the issues that Nurgaliyev might raise is a provision in the bill that would allow the Public Chamber to exercise oversight over the work of the police by examining whether decrees, orders and other police-related documents infringe on civil rights. Deputy Interior Minister Sergei Bulavin shared the provision at a round table Tuesday.
The bill also would require that top local police officials regularly report to regional and municipal legislatures, while district police officers would be obliged to regularly report to local communities, Kommersant reported Wednesday.
The Interior Ministry wants to ditch many functions that duplicate the functions of other government agencies, Bulavin said, citing as examples the extradition of illegal migrants, the annual technical examination of vehicles, helping court marshals collect from debtors and looking for military draft dodgers. Earlier this year, the police were stripped of their right to manage drunk tanks, while the Moscow police became the first in Russia to stop inspecting retail markets and checking whether traders have the proper documents to work there.
Bulavin also said the new legislation would require new recruits to obtain recommendations from officers in active service and to pass drug and psychological tests.
One police officer called a monthly salary of 60,000 rubles “very good money” but expressed doubt that the reform would go through. “They will never allow cuts to the staff at central headquarters,” said the police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A fellow police officer, standing nearby on watch at a metro station, joked about the reform. “If they pull it off, it will be the end of the world,” he said.
TITLE: Vedomosti Files Suit Against Gryzlov
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky and Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Vedomosti on Tuesday sued State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov for accusing it of siding with Chechen rebels, marking the first time in at least a decade that a Russian newspaper has filed a defamation suit against such a high-ranking official.
Business News Media, Vedomosti’s publisher, filed the defamation suit at the Moscow’s Presnensky District Court, editor Tatyana Lysova and publisher Mikhail Doubik said in a joint statement published on the newspaper’s web site.
Business News Media is a unit of Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, the parent company of The St. Petersburg Times and The Moscow Times.
The newspaper is seeking an apology fr om Gryzlov — who also heads the ruling United Russia party’s faction in the Duma — but no monetary compensation, said Vladimir Rumyantsev, a lawyer for Vedomosti.
The move comes almost four weeks after Gryzlov suggested that Vedomosti and the popular Moskovsky Komsomolets daily were in cahoots with Islamists responsible for the March 29 bombings in the Moscow metro that killed 40 people and wounded another 80.
The lawsuit could prove to be a high-stakes battleground for media freedom, as the government on Saturday submitted to the United Russia-dominated Duma a bill that would give the Federal Security Service the power to arrest or fine people and organizations that do not comply with officers’ “legitimate demands.”
Vedomosti wrote in an editorial Tuesday that the rules could be used to arrest journalists and editors who refuse to remove articles from their publications’ web sites or otherwise fail to retract materials that the FSB feels threaten or undermine national security.
In a note accompanying the bill, the government wrote that the measures were needed to fight extremism and terrorism, noting that “some media outlets … propagate individualism, violence and mistrust of the state’s capacity to protect its citizens.”
Gryzlov said April 2 during a meeting between President Dmitry Medvedev and Duma faction leaders that two articles published March 30 — a day after the bombings — showed that the papers were siding with the terrorists.
“If we analyze these three sources, then we will see that in fact, they are stewing in the same juices. The connection between the publications and the terrorists’ actions evokes suspicions,” Gryzlov said.
He was referring to Vedomosti’s analysis “Revenge for the Caucasus” and an article by Moskovsky Komsomolets columnist Alexander Minkin. Both stories said the attacks were part of rebels’ announced strategy to bring the war in the North Caucasus to the Russian heartland.
In a video released a day after the articles, Chechen rebel commander Doku Umarov claimed responsibility for the twin bombings and said they were meant to target Russian civilians in revenge for federal security forces’ killings of Ingush and Chechen natives.
Vedomosti editor Lysova sent a letter to Gryzlov on April 6 asking him to explain his remarks or provide facts showing a connection between the paper’s reporters and terrorist activity.
“If your remarks had an emotional nature and were not based on solid facts but resulted from a mistake or a confusion, then the editorial office of Vedomosti would want to receive apologies from you,” the letter said, according to an excerpt published on the paper’s web site.
Instead of an answer from Gryzlov, the paper received an offer to hear an official explanation from Yury Shuvalov, who is Gryzlov’s top deputy in United Russia. Vedomosti was not satisfied with the response and decided to turn to the courts, the statement said.
Rumyantsev, the lawyer for Vedomosti, said Tuesday evening that the suit was filed at the Presnensky court in central Moscow because that is the district where Gryzlov lives.
Moskovsky Komsomolets editor Pavel Gusev told The St. Petersburg Times that Minkin had already sued Gryzlov as an individual and that the newspaper would support his suit.
Timur Prokopenko, a spokesman for Gryzlov, said he was aware of the case but declined further comment, saying has not received a copy of the complaint.
Media experts contacted for this article said they could not remember any such cases since Prime Minister Vladimir Putin ascended to the presidency in 2000.
As head of the lower house of the parliament, Gryzlov is the state’s fourth-highest representative, following only President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin and Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov.
Andrei Richter, head of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Center, a media freedom watchdog, called the lawsuit “unprecedented.” But for a paper like Vedomosti, the decision to go to court is natural, he said.
“Vedomosti is really concerned about its reputation, and any outcome will help to strengthen its credibility,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
Although Gryzlov won a measure of support for his comments from Mironov, who heads the rival A Just Russia party and has clashed with Gryzlov in recent months, Medvedev played down the issue. Criticism from the media was “normal” after such an event, but journalists should not side with terrorists, Medvedev said at the time.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Zhirinovsky Fined
MOSCOW (SPT) — Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, was fined 1 million rubles ($34,000) by Moscow’s Savyolovsky District Court on Wednesday for defaming Mayor Yury Luzhkov and City Hall on television, Interfax reported.
Zhirinovsky is being punished for calling city officials “a Moscow mafia” last October and for saying “everything is tied up by a single man — the Moscow mayor.”
The fine, which is five times less than the plaintiffs had demanded, is to be split equally between Luzhkov and City Hall.
‘Morgue’ Killer Gets 16
MOSCOW (SPT) — Former St. Petersburg morgue worker Valery Burykin, 56, was sentenced Thursday to 16 years in prison for murder and banditry, the Investigative Committee said in a statement.
Burykin was found guilty last week of leading a gang that took control over many of the city’s morgues in the 1990s to profit from illegal side businesses, such as hiding the bodies of criminals killed in mob wars. Prosecutors said Burykin ultimately ordered the killing of a former co-conspirator who attempted to quit the group.
‘Thief-in-Law’ Released
MOSCOW (SPT) — Russian police have decided not to bring charges against Ded Khasan, a reputed thief-in-law deported from Ukraine, and released him soon after his arrival at Sheremetyevo Airport, Interfax reported Wednesday.
Officers from the criminal investigation department of the Interior Ministry had a short talk with Ded Khasan, 73, whose real name is Aslan Usoyan, at Sheremetyevo and then released him on Tuesday.
TITLE: Eggs, Smoke Dominate Ukrainian Parliament Session
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Ukraine’s parliament ratified a deal to extend the lease on Russia’s naval base Tuesday in a riotous session where the opponents of the measure engaged in fistfights, hurled smoke bombs and tossed eggs at the speaker.
While hailed by President Dmitry Medvedev and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yanukovych, the deal was described as a “dark page in Ukraine’s history” by Ukraine’s chief opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who called for early elections to the legislature.
Defending friendlier ties with Russia, Yanukovych didn’t rule out recognizing Georgia’s two breakaway regions as independent states — which could further pull him into Russia’s embrace — in a Tuesday appearance at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE.
On the same occasion, Yanukovych turned down Russia’s proposal to join the customs union that it formed with Kazakhstan and Belarus, attributing the refusal to Ukraine’s membership in the World Trade Organization, a global fair-trade arbiter.
In Kiev, pro-Yanukovych deputies earlier that day mustered enough votes to give the green light to a deal that will extend the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s stay at the port of Sevastopol by 25 years, through 2042, in exchange for a $40 billion discount on natural gas imports. As a precaution to secure order, the majority had canceled debate and blocked access to the platform and the podium, but this did not stop protests from the opposition, who began to brawl and bombard the area with smoke bombs and eggs.
In a smoke-filled assembly hall that resembled a battlefield, two chamber guards, clad in black, rushed to shield Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn from the egg deluge with two open black umbrellas. Footage from the scene showed an egg landing on the head of one of the guards. Anti-Yanukovych deputies also spread a giant yellow and blue national flag across the hall in an effort to thwart the 236 votes cast in favor of the deal in the 450-seat parliament.
The Russian side was considerably less fractious in considering the deal Tuesday. Gathered for a special session in Moscow, most of the State Duma’s 450 deputies applauded on receiving news of the ratification in Kiev before giving their own overwhelming blessing of 410 votes. The Federation Council is scheduled to consider the agreement Wednesday.
Following the dramatic standoff in Kiev, opposition deputies walked out of the parliament to a crowd of supporters outside — who had attempted to break in through police cordons — to make speeches. Proponents of the agreement also rallied nearby. The two groups numbered some 10,000 people in total.
Tymoshenko urged supporters to turn up near the parliament building before the next session, scheduled for May 11, and block out the “traitors” and thus prevent the chamber from operating until they agree to abrogate their vote or call an early election.
“The Ukrainian parliament is a gathering of people whose majority hate Ukraine, don’t accept Ukrainian values and downright fight against Ukraine,” she told reporters shortly before.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on television that the government would respond with force to any violence.
In a separate statement earlier that day, Tymoshenko rejected Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent assertion that she had agreed to consider granting Russia a lease extension for the naval base if the price were right.
Viktor Yushchenko, ousted as president in elections earlier this year, said permission for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet to stay longer equalled “military usurpation.”
Another opposition leader, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, warned that the opposition would reverse the deal if and when it came to dominate the political landscape.
“There’s no such thing as eternal politicians and eternal agreements,” he said in a statement.
Yanukovych, speaking at a PACE session Tuesday, again brushed off accusations that his decision to let the Russian navy stay longer contradicts Ukraine’s constitution. He said he had to reduce the gas price that Tymoshenko negotiated as the previous prime minister, describing it as unfairly high.
Most Ukrainian members of the pan-European legislature left the session hall in protest of the deal after Yanukovych took the floor.
Yanukovych didn’t answer negatively when a PACE member asked whether Ukraine would recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the regions Russia recognized as sovereign states after a brief war with Georgia in 2008.
“We are categorically against applying double standards in this matter,” he said, adding that the global community needed to hammer out clear rules to deal with nations seeking independence.
In recognizing the two breakaway regions, Russia said any criticism of the decision from the West would represent double standards because the West had backed Kosovo’s secession from Serbia.
Medvedev, on a visit to Norway, said the vote in Kiev was the best policy for Ukraine.
“I am very happy about that,” he told reporters in Oslo. “It shows that reason triumphed and Ukraine’s strategic interests prevailed over fleeting emotions.”
Putin paid a whirlwind visit to Kiev overnight before the vote, announcing that he made “extensive” proposals to Ukraine to cooperate in nuclear power energy, which could involve upgrading Ukraine’s reactors. Shipbuilding and aircraft construction are the other areas for joint efforts, he said after talks with Azarov and Yanukovych, who remarked that the cooperation proposals were “interesting.”
The stopover on the way home from Italy was to prepare for a high-level bilateral meeting Friday, he said.
Putin reiterated his assessment of the gas bill discount, which Russia agreed to give as part of future, increased payments for the naval base, as “exorbitant.”
“I could eat Yanukovych and your prime minister together for that money,” Putin told a Ukrainian reporter, imagining that such a sum could even persuade him to resort to cannibalism. “But there’s no military base in the world that costs this much money.”
Medvedev, speaking in Oslo, picked the word “exorbitant” as well when he mentioned the deal, but he said the price was not so high.
“The payment for the presence of our navy is large, but it’s not exorbitant,” he said. “It’s not exorbitant because we have a strategic relationship with Ukraine.”
TITLE: Katyn Documents Posted on Internet
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: The Federal Archive Agency posted documents Wednesday for the first time on the Internet about the Soviet Union’s World War II massacre of more than 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the documents posted on the archives’ Russian-language web site, reflecting a new willingness in Russia to accept responsibility for the killings at Katyn and elsewhere in 1940.
Relations between Russia and Poland have warmed following the tragic April 10 plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others on a flight to visit the Katyn forest near Smolensk for a memorial ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the massacre.
But while Medvedev’s order was clearly intended as a positive gesture, the documents posted Wednesday were made public long ago and already have been published in Poland and Russia. Many more documents remain classified, despite dogged Polish appeals for the archives to be opened.
“There is some material that has not yet been handed over to our Polish partners. I have given the order to make that happen,” he told journalists in Copenhagen.
The Katyn documents would help people learn from history, he said.
“Let everyone know what was done, who made the decisions, who ordered the elimination of the Polish officers,” he said. “Everything is written there. With all the signatures.”
The documents now on the Internet were made public in 1992 by former President Boris Yeltsin and include a March 1940 letter by Lavrenty Beria, head of the secret police, recommending the execution of the Polish prisoners of war. The letter bears the signatures of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and three other members of the Politburo.
The documents also include the minutes of a Politburo meeting on March 5, 1940, and a note from the head of the Soviet secret police in 1959 informing Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that the Katyn files had been destroyed.
For 50 years, the Soviet Union blamed the massacres on the Nazi German forces who invaded in 1941. This remained the official line until Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged Soviet responsibility in 1990, but Poles had always known the truth, and the cover-up fed animosity toward Russia.
Documents that remain classified include materials from an investigation in the 1990s that are believed to include the names of those who carried out the executions.
Russia also has refused Polish requests to recognize the executed Poles as victims of political repression.
Polish historian Andrzej Kunert said that although the documents posted Wednesday were known to historians, the decision to post them on the Internet was significant. “We can surely call the decision a breakthrough because it seems that for the first time a web site that is generally accessible to everyone in the Russian Federation publishes three very important documents concerning the Katyn massacre,” Kunert said.
The Memorial rights organization, which brought the appeal, welcomed Wednesday’s posting of the documents but said it was only a small step. “The files of this criminal case must be disclosed and procedures observed,” said Alexander Guryanov of Memorial, Interfax reported.
TITLE: Cheated Homebuyers Create Own Social Network
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Almost six years have passed since Igor Gulyev, a 22-year-old entrepreneur at the time, bought a two-room apartment in a soon-to-be-completed house in Yubileiny, a town in the Moscow region.
Gulyev is still waiting for his apartment to be finished, but the construction has been stalled since 2005. He had to close his business because he was exhausted by legal squabbles with the developers.
Two months ago, Gulyev launched Odnodolshiki.ru, the first social network for so-called “cheated homebuyers,” allowing those who have invested into apartment buildings that have not yet materialized to receive advice and discuss ways of solving their problems.
“I had the idea to create a web site where one can upload pictures and videos of meetings, and place articles that no one will delete,” Gulyev told The Moscow Times.
The cheated homebuyers first appeared on the Russian real estate market in 2004 after many prospective apartment buyers found that construction on their future apartment buildings, into which they had invested a lot of money, had been halted because of developer bankruptcy and other reasons.
Odnodolshiki.ru, whose name refers to the wildly popular social network Odnoklassniki.ru, currently has about 770 registered users and more than 2,500 unregistered users, and 300 to 400 people visit the web site daily, Gulyev said.
Users join the community by creating an account, which allows them to add friends, post comments, upload pictures and videos, and create their own blogs.
A number of web sites for cheated homebuyers already exist, including Postroim.com, launched by the United Russia’s working group to protect the rights of cheated homebuyers, and Help.su, created by A Just Russia.
The commercial web site Vdolevke.ru allows current and future apartments owners to find neighbors and chat.
Odnodolshiki.ru has generated resistance, however, from certain corners.
Gulyev said United Russia did not like his web site and that the party’s working group had sent him a letter declaring the social network an ineffective project.
Most homebuyers are concerned with their own problems, and “any activity to unite investors somehow usually fails,” said the letter, published on Odnodolshiki.ru.
“As far as homebuyers’ communication is concerned, such web sites already exist, for example, Vdolevke.ru. It has a broader category for communication, and it’s more viable than a portal meant for cheated investors only,” it said.
Viktoria Penkova, a member of the United Russia’s working group for cheated homebuyers, admitted that Odnodolshiki.ru is a legitimate project, but said it isn’t making constructive suggestions.
“This web site would be more useful if people shared experience — how not to get into such trouble — and suggested certain measures to solve the problem,” she said.
Alexander Khinstein, head of United Russia’s working group for cheated homebuyers, said earlier this month that a total of 150 houses on which construction had stalled had been completed in Russia last year, providing new housing for 14,000 families.
Cheated homebuyers in the Moscow region will have their apartments completed this year, Vladimir Zhidkin, deputy head of the Moscow regional government, told RIA-Novosti last week.
Alexander Kosovan, head of City Hall’s construction department, said Friday that the last house for cheated homebuyers in Moscow had been completed.
“We think that the problem of cheated investors has been solved,” Kosovan said.
Users of Odnodolshiki.ru believe that their project “shows a different reality” from the one that authorities are pushing.
A list compiled by Odnodolshiki.ru names 11 construction projects that are still on hold in Moscow. It also mentions stalled projects in the Moscow region and cities such as Rostov-on-Don, Tyumen, Sochi and Samara.
The site has a list of 19,946 cheated households from all over Russia and provides information on unreliable developers, including the amount of money collected in advance payments by each firm.
A post on Odnodolshiki.ru said the lists would be attached to the claim that users of the network plan to file with the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
“Authorities don’t work with cheated homebuyers, they only say they do,” Gulyev said.
“It looks like all other web sites for cheated homebuyers have been created to give the impression that something is being done,” he said.
Samara resident Ilya Sidelnikov registered on the site about three weeks ago, but said he wasn’t an active user of Odnodolshiki.ru. He visits the web site for news and for tracking prosecution of unreliable developers by local authorities.
Sidelnikov, 34, an engineer in a development firm, bought an apartment in a house for which only the foundation laid in 2008, just before the economic crisis hit.
The construction hasn’t progressed since 2008, and the developer has declared bankruptcy but promises to resume construction, Sidelnikov said.
“I will have to pay all of my wages to cover a mortgage loan over the next 15 years,” said Sidelnikov, who is currently living in his parents’ apartment with his wife and daughter.
TITLE: FSB Draft Legislation Raises Concern
AUTHOR: By Alexander Bratersky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Federal Security Service could get more power to intimidate citizens and punish them for not complying with what is vaguely described as “legitimate demands” from its officers, according to a government-drafted bill.
The bill, submitted to the State Duma on Saturday, is apparently aimed at lending more legitimacy to the FSB’s informal ways of work. But documentation accompanying the bill suggested that it could also be used by law enforcement to target media reporting unfavorably about the state’s actions.
Among the provisions in the legislation is a rule that would allow the FSB to warn citizens or legal entities that their behavior is creating conditions that could lead to crime, even if there are no legal grounds to hold them criminally responsible.
The FSB also wants to introduce fines for citizens and legal entities for not obeying FSB officials’ demands or for hindering their work.
Under the existing Administrative Code, those who disobey orders of police, military, prison or migration officials can be punished by a fine of up to 1,000 rubles (about $35) or be arrested for 15 days. The code does not include FSB in this clause, but by law, FSB officials are considered to be in military service and therefore have the right to issue fines or conduct arrests.
An explanatory note accompanying the bill noted the rise of “extremist activity” in Russia and suggested that the amendments were urgently needed. Citing figures from the Investigative Committee, the document said 460 extremist crimes were registered in Russia in 2008, or nearly 30 percent more than a year earlier.
The note, posted on the Duma’s web site, said the media was partly to blame for the rise of extremism.
“Some media outlets, both print and electronic, openly help shape negative processes in the spiritual sphere, propagate individualism, violence and mistrust of the state’s capacity to protect its citizens, effectively drawing young people into extremist activities.”
The bill would mark a return to the Soviet-era practice of informal talks, in which officers from the FSB predecessor, the KGB, would intimidate public activists from speaking against the government, human rights activists said.
Lev Ponomaryov, a Soviet dissident who now heads the Committee for Human Rights, recalled how decades ago university students were forced to sign agreements with the KGB promising that they would fight political dissent.
“People will be forced to cooperate with the FSB, and they could face fines and arrests. This is a serious situation and we will protest against these amendments,” Ponomaryov said.
Under the law now, warnings to those believed to be involved in suspicious activities are issued by prosecutors. Also, citizens are now free to disregard the FSB’s calls to informal talks.
Andrei Soldatov, head of the Agentura think tank, which studies security agencies, said the changes were prepared to raise the FSB’s profile and return some of the pre-emptive security functions that it has lost in recent years.
“People got used to the fact that they are investigating cases. But the FSB wants to act when there is no case and they want to act pre-emptively,” Soldatov said.
During the 2000s, law enforcement agencies, including the FSB, were amassing legal authority and resources, saying they needed more power to fight extremism and terrorism.
Often, these powers were applied to intimidate and silence political dissent, especially after the controversial law on extremism was adopted in 2007. The law made criticism of the authorities and sowing discord between social groups a punishable crime.
Russian courts have ruled several times since then in extremist cases that officials and law enforcement officers are distinguishable social groups, and they have issued harsh sentences to defendants who have criticized them.
Mikhail Grishankov, first deputy head of the Duma’s Security Committee and a member of the ruling United Russia party, said the amendments were developed long ago.
“In the framework of preventive measures, new opportunities will emerge for the FSB,” Grishankov, a retired FSB officer, told The St. Petersburg Times.
Even under the new legislation, if it were to pass, a person could not be forced to cooperate with the FSB. “This is his right,” he said.
TITLE: Bakiyev, Senior Allies Charged for Killings
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Kyrgyzstan’s interim government said Tuesday that it had charged ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev with “mass killing” and has formally prepared an extradition request, Reuters reported.
Belarus took in Bakiyev last week after he fled in the aftermath of a bloody revolt. Moscow made it clear that he was not welcome in Russia.
“The former president of Kyrgyzstan, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has been charged with mass killing,” Azimbek Beknazarov, an interim deputy prime minister for security, said in Bishkek. The extradition request would be sent “within days,” he added.
Bakiyev might also be charged with abuse of power in an official capacity, Beknazarov told reporters.
He also said the government had an arrest warrant out for Bakiyev’s brother Zhanybek Bakiyev, who was also accused of mass killings. Bishkek has sent extradition requests to Kazakhstan and other countries, Beknazarov said, Interfax reported.
Former Prime Minister Daniyar Usenov and the ousted special forces chief, Murat Sutalinov, and Bakiyev’s eldest son, Marat, are also wanted on the same charges, Beknazarov said.
Troops loyal to Bakiyev shot into crowds of protesters on the night of April 7. Some protesters were armed and fought back and at least 85 people were killed. Bakiyev has maintained that Moscow may have played a role in his overthrow.
But Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has made it equally clear that Bakiyev was welcome to remain in his country.
Russia’s Federal Security Service detained Kyrgyzstan’s former interior minister, Moldomusa Kongantiyev, and sent him home Monday.
The extradition was the latest strong signal of Russian support for the new administration.
The interim government said Kongantiyev, who was badly beaten during the uprising, was under arrest and being investigated for his role in the upheaval earlier this month, among other things.
TITLE: HP Tentatively Begins Production in St. Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Alex Anishyuk
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Hewlett-Packard and component maker Foxconn opened a pilot assembly line to make computers in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, but the partners offered few details on when their main production facility would be finished.
The companies were also reluctant to discuss the economic viability of the project, which they first announced in May 2008. At the time, the 32,000-square-meter main facility was expected to cost $50 million and have an annual capacity of 500,000 personal computers.
The ceremony, attended by senior local officials including Governor Valentina Matviyenko, offered the U.S. computer giant a welcome opportunity to showcase its investment in Russia after investigators raided its Moscow offices as part of a corruption probe earlier this month.
German investigators have said they suspect that HP executives gave millions of dollars in bribes to officials at the Prosecutor General’s Office in 2002 and 2003 to win supply contracts. Russia’s current top prosecutor, Yury Chaika, said Wednesday that the investigation was ongoing and that criminal cases could still be opened.
“If there’s every reason and they hand us the materials, then naturally a criminal case will be opened. So far, we don’t have that information,” Chaika said during a hearing in the Federation Council, Interfax reported.
HP said it would not be commenting on the investigation Wednesday, and the companies were nearly as tight-lipped on the prospects for their main Foxconn Rus facility, initially planned to be on line by spring 2009.
Jim Chang, executive vice president of Taiwan-based Ho Hai Precision Group, owner of Foxconn, said the plant would “probably not be finished this year” and could exceed initial cost expectations.
“Two years ago when we started this project, we announced the figure of $50 million,” he said. “We are still in the process of making our investment, but I have a feeling we may go beyond this figure.”
The main factory in Kolpino, a suburb in southern St. Petersburg, was supposed to be launched first, but because of the recession, the partners agreed to start with a pilot production line on a rented 10,000-square-meter facility in nearby Shushary, HP and Foxconn said in a joint statement.
The line, operating in test mode since the start of the year, will produce HP, HP Pro and Compaq models. It will initially employ 100 workers, although the staff will grow as production increases.
Eric Cador, HP’s senior vice president in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, said the production pace would “be driven by demand.”
The assembly line will produce up to 40,000 PCs per month. HP is now negotiating with its Russian partners on distribution, the statement said.
When asked by reporters about the logic of localizing in Russia rather than importing from China, Chang conceded that the project had obstacles to overcome, at least in the short term.
“Like any company, from the efficiency point of view, we’d like to see ourselves in a profitable position, but we are realists. At least at the beginning, this will not be a profitable project,” he said. “We’ll have to learn, but we are historically fast learners, so I’m optimistic about it.”
He did not say when the investors might break even on the project, which Cador called a long-term investment.
“We are here for the long prospective, so I think it will be profitable after all,” Cador said.
The main benefit to consumers, he said, will be faster access to new technology, since all updates will be made locally. When reporters asked whether the localization would reduce costs, St. Petersburg Deputy Governor Mikhail Oseyevsky stepped in to note that “every college student knows … the price is defined by the basic ratio of supply and demand.”
Matviyenko, who was on hand for the project’s announcement in May 2008, said Wednesday that there was a good reason her city was chosen for the high-tech production.
“The first radio and the first TV in Russia were made in St. Petersburg, so we have a long tradition of innovation here,” she said. “We as a government are doing our best to create a high-tech cluster, and this factory will become the first of its kind.”
She then pressed a symbolic blue button to launch production and granted the first 20 computers made there to a local school.
TITLE: City Gets New Park Inn
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Rezidor Hotel Group opened a third Park Inn hotel in St. Petersburg on Monday.
The new Park Inn Nevsky hotel, located on Nevsky Prospekt just behind Ploshchad Vosstaniya, has added another 270 rooms to the local chain, Rezidor Hotel Group said.
The owner of the new hotel, Wenaas Holding, also owns the 1,200-room Park Inn Pribaltiiskaya Hotel and 840-room Park Inn Pulkovskaya Hotel. Rezidor also operates the 164-room Radisson SAS Royal Hotel.
“The unique location of Park Inn Nevsky will guarantee its success,” said Geir Sikko, the hotel’s general manager.
The hotel, which has been under construction for three years, is located at the beginning of the stretch of Nevsky Prospekt known as Stary Nevsky, within walking distance of the city’s business center and major tourist attractions. Rezidor expects that the hotel’s proximity to the Moscow railway station will make it a popular place to stay with travelers arriving both on business and for pleasure.
Yulia Anisimova, PR manager at Park Inn Nevsky and Radisson SAS hotel, said the new hotel had not yet obtained certification.
“However, we plan to get four-star certification,” Anisimova said.
The hotel offers both standard rooms and “business friendly” rooms, as well as two junior suites.
During the low season, the hotel will charge 5,900 rubles ($202) for a standard room, 6,900 rubles for a business friendly room and 9,800 rubles for a junior suite. During peak season in June, prices will increase to 12,900 for a standard room, 13,900 for a business room and 25,000 ($855) for a junior suite per night.
Park Inn Nevsky has a large underground car park, two conference rooms and a restaurant serving German and international cuisine.
Sergei Korneyev, head of the Russian Tourism Union, said the opening of the new Park Inn hotel in St. Petersburg was good news.
“Such a hotel is obviously needed, especially since the hotel is a chain brand,” he said. “This fact may prove to be fairly significant for a number of clients who prefer to stay in this hotel chain in particular, and who probably have bonus cards for it. It’s also important that the hotel is located in the center.”
Korneyev said that Park Inn positions itself correctly in St. Petersburg by presenting a range of hotels.
“This is also a good hotel for corporate events, since it’s quite big,” he said.
Korneyev said St. Petersburg still needs more hotels, especially since the volume of tourists visiting the city continues to grow.
“I’d say the city deserves to have its tourist inflow doubled,” he said, adding that in the past few years the number of hotel rooms in the city has significantly increased. That fact contributed to the increase in tourism to the city, because in previous years many tourists had problems finding a suitable hotel, particularly during the city’s peak tourism season of the White Nights.
“I’d say for the moment the city still needs more three-star hotels for the White Nights period, since many people who come here still want to find an economy hotel option, especially during the recession,” he said.
Park Inn is the youngest and fastest-growing mid-range Rezidor brand. The Park Inn chain was launched in 2003 and currently consists of 140 hotels, including those under construction, in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
TITLE: Lufthansa Group Promises Future Growth
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The financial crisis did not prevent Lufthansa Group from increasing the number of its passengers traveling from St. Petersburg by about 20,000 in 2009 compared to 2008, Lufthansa representatives said Wednesday.
“Last year our group of Lufthansa, Swiss and Austrian airlines transported about 500,000 people from the city, proving once again that the inclusion of other airlines into our group had a positive effect,” Bart Buyse, Lufthansa’s regional manager for St. Petersburg and Russia’s northwest, said at an event marking 30 years of Lufthansa flights to St. Petersburg on Wednesday.
Buyse said Lufthansa was planning to close its office and ticket desk on Nevsky Prospekt in early May due to increasing demand for online ticket sales.
“St. Petersburg is leading the online ticket sales market in Russia — more than 25 percent of tickets are sold that way now. So we can see that the traditional way of selling tickets has already gone out of fashion,” he said.
Buyse said Lufthansa Group had already closed its ticket offices in Samara, Yekaterinburg and Rostov, while in Europe it closed its ticket offices 10 years ago. He said online ticket sales make plane tickets cheaper and save the company extra costs.
He added however that the company would keep direct sales service at some of the city’s travel agencies, such as Soleans and Sindbad Travel, with whom it cooperates. Lufthansa’s main office will move to Pulkovo airport.
Buyse said Lufthansa offered services to different sectors of the city. For the business sector, it offers the Star Alliance Company Plus bonus program, in which about 1,500 companies in the city take part. The company’s flights are used by many business travelers, including people traveling to the annual St. Petersburg Economic Forum, he said.
Lufthansa Group also caters for the city’s cultural sector, cooperating regularly with the Mariinsky and Mikhailovsky theaters, the State Hermitage Museum and the Philharmonic, and of course for the sports segment, since the airline is a sponsor of St. Petersburg’s FC Zenit, Buyse said.
Buyse said that Lufthansa “believed in St. Petersburg and would continue to offer new destinations,” while adding that this would not happen during the crisis.
“In the long term, we see many possibilities in the city, and I believe Pulkovo airport and Lufthansa will develop together,” he said.
Sergei Piliponsky, passenger services director at Pulkovo, said Lufthansa was one of the biggest air carriers at the airport.
“We really hope it will connect us to some other cities in Germany in future,” Piliponsky said.
Lufthansa introduced its first flight from St. Petersburg to Frankfurt-am-Main in 1980, starting with just one flight a day, then increasing to two and finally three times a day. In 2006, Lufthansa began offering a twice-daily flight to Munich, and in 2009 it added a flight to Dusseldorf.
“We currently operate 42 flights a week from St. Petersburg, providing convenient connections from Germany’s main airports to 206 destinations in 78 countries of the world,” Buyse said.
Aage Dunhaupt, director for Lufthansa’s corporate communications in Europe, said that on a global level, the company planned to expand and increase its capacity by at least four percent this year.
“This will be achieved by launching new flights to Iran and Tashkent, and of course by adding A-380 airbuses to the company’s fleet of planes,” Dunhaupt said at the anniversary event.
TITLE: ICQ Sold By AOL To DST
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: MOSCOW — Digital Sky Technologies Limited will buy the ICQ chat service from AOL for $187 million, the companies said Wednesday.
The purchase of ICQ is a strategic step in the development of DST’s business in Russia and Eastern Europe, Yury Milner, DST’s founder, said in a statement. ICQ’s long history and large base of loyal customers provide a huge opportunity for further strengthening DST’s position in the region, he said.
“AOL will continue working to restructure our business, and we are very glad to find a worthy home for ICQ in DST,” said Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL.
The ICQ sale may close in the third quarter, according to a regulatory filing. If it isn’t completed by Aug. 28, a date that may be extended to April 2011, either group can back out without penalty, according to the filing. Closely held Digital Sky invested $300 million in top social network Facebook last year.
ICQ was created in 1996 by Israeli students and was sold in 1998 to AOL. Among the other companies competing for ICQ were China’s Tencent, which recently became a shareholder in DST, and Prof-Media, which owns Rambler.
ICQ’s selling price was at the low end of an estimated $200 million to $300 million, said John Blackledge, a New York-based Credit Suisse analyst.
(Vedomosti, Bloomberg)
TITLE: LUKoil Launches Caspian Sea Oil Field
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia finally became a Caspian Sea oil producer on Wednesday as LUKoil began operating a modest offshore field in the presence of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who smeared some of the crude across his cheeks in celebration.
Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have led the efforts to tap the sea’s energy resources by enlisting such industry majors as ExxonMobil, BP and Chevron. Two other littoral states, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, have posted only minor outputs while Iran has yet to pump its first Caspian oil.
Putin flew in by helicopter to tour LUKoil’s drilling rig, 180 kilometers from the city of Astrakhan, before pressing a token button to set the oil flowing. LUKoil chief Vagit Alekperov poured some of the crude into a safety helmet and offered Putin a chance to practice the industry tradition of washing one’s face in oil from the first gusher to mark a well’s success.
“Putin dipped his fingers in the crude and smeared it over his cheeks,” the Cabinet said in a statement describing the ceremony. “Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin and Vagit Alekperov, the accompanying delegation members, and employees on the rig followed his example.”
LUKoil spent 34.4 billion rubles ($1.2 billion) from 2004 to 2009 to bring the Yury Korchagin field into operation, the country’s second-largest oil producer said in a statement. Alekperov told reporters on the rig that the spending had reached 40 billion rubles since exploration in the Russian section of the Caspian Sea started in 1995.
Oil and gas production in the Caspian Sea will significantly replenish global supplies, experts have said, because the area is believed to contain the world’s third-largest energy reserves. The deposits there are a major prospective replacement for Russia’s maturing west Siberian fields, in addition to the new provinces in east Siberia and the Arctic.
“Certainly, other Russian companies would love and will try to get positions in the Caspian, although practically none of them has offshore expertise,” said Elena Herold, a Russia expert at PFC Energy, a U.S.-based consultancy. “Offshore is Russia’s next frontier that is much more promising than east Siberia.”
Further progress in capturing the Caspian and Arctic offshore energy resources — now classified as strategic assets and available only to state-owned Rosneft and Gazprom — will likely need foreign investment and, more important, technology, she said. Therefore, the Russian government looks set to amend legislation in favor of greater foreign involvement in such challenging projects.
So far, Russia appears to act on a case-by-case basis. President Dmitry Medvedev earlier this week invited Norway’s StatoilHydro to cooperate with Gazprom in developing the Prirazlomnoye oil field in the Arctic waters. Gazprom is also considering a partnership with a foreign major to develop the Yamal gas fields.
But more liberal legislation may not be enough to make Western oil companies interested, said Alexei Kokin, an analyst at investment company Metropol. As another stimulus for the industry, the government has to offer tax breaks for work in harsh conditions at remote deposits, he said.
Putin said Wednesday that the government would study a proposal to exempt Caspian Sea projects from the hefty export duty, a measure that would likely upset the Finance Ministry.
“We’ll see,” he said. “I don’t rule it out.”
The Finance Ministry has been pushing for terminating existing export duty holidays for 22 east Siberian oil fields, as it is struggling to reduce the gaping budget deficit.
On the Caspian Sea, Korchagin’s recoverable reserves amount to 28.8 million tons of crude and 63.3 billion cubic meters of gas, LUKoil said.
LUKoil has discovered five other offshore fields in the sea’s Russian waters, most notably the Filanovsky field in 2005, which holds 220 million tons of oil and 40 billion cubic meters of gas. The company plans to bring it on line in 2015.
For comparison, Kazakhstan is hoping to lift 2 billion tons of crude from its supergiant Kashagan field, which is being developed under a production-sharing agreement with such foreign partners as Eni, Exxon, Shell and Total.
TITLE: Dunkin’ Donuts Returns To Russia, Eyes Petersburg
AUTHOR: By Maria Antonova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dunkin’ Donuts, the U.S. eatery that left Russia after a three-year stint in the 1990s, has returned to Moscow with big plans for rapid expansion.
The company first came to Moscow in 1996, but closed abruptly in 1999, deciding to cut its losses after having taken a big hit during the 1998 crisis. Internationally, the brand expanded over the following decade, especially in Asia, where 2,000 of its 3,000 international cafes are now located.
Ten years later, Russians are more receptive to international brands, and coffee has become an increasingly popular social activity, while the brand has more experience and can better adapt to the local environment, Tony Pavese, chief executive of the company’s international division, said Wednesday. “Russia is the next step in our European strategy,” he said.
The company will open its first location at 17 Novy Arbat on May 11, where it will serve doughnuts and coffee. The opening was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but it was pushed back after deliveries were interrupted by the eruption of the Icelandic volcano, which closed airspace over Europe.
The next cafe will open at 8 Altufyevskoye Shosse in northern Moscow. Outside of the capital, the chain aims to expand first to St. Petersburg, Sochi, Novosibirsk, Krasnodar and Yekaterinburg.
The cafes, which have a special “international design” differentiating them from their U.S. counterparts, will be operated by Donuts Project, which has exclusive rights to the franchise in Russia and Ukraine. At least 50 locations will be opened in Moscow in the next three to five years, including up to 20 by the end of this year, Donuts Project CEO Konstantin Petrov said.
While Russians may be unused to the colorful assortment of doughnuts behind the cafe’s glass counter, Petrov said doughnuts are a close relative of the Russian sweet fried dessert ponchik, which was especially popular during Soviet times.
To cater to Russian tastes, the chain will offer more substantial food choices, such as salads and sandwiches, alongside the doughnuts. It will also use fillings like raspberry jam and custard that are more suited to the Russian palate, Petrov said.
The company will import 70 percent of its ingredients from abroad and buy the rest from local suppliers, but it is willing to localize its supply lines further if more certified Russian producers can be found.
Petrov, a Donetsk native who owns 15 restaurants in Ukraine, said total investment into the chain would be 300 million to 400 million rubles ($10 million to $14 million) in the first year. Petrov is investing 50 percent, with the rest coming from other unidentified investors.
TITLE: A Cloud Over Airplane Safety
AUTHOR: By Peter Singer
TEXT: When airports across Europe reopened after the closure caused by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, it was not because the amount of ash in the atmosphere had dropped, but because the risk that the ash posed to airplane safety had been reassessed. Was it new scientific information that led to the lifting of the flight ban, or was it a reflection of the hardship — both personal and economic — that the ban was causing?
Over six days, about 95,000 flights were canceled at a cost to airlines of more than $1 billion. An estimated 5 million people were stranded or delayed. The British economy lost ?1.5 billion ($2.3 billion), and others were similarly affected. Flower growers in Kenya, who depend on air transport to take their short-lived product to Europe, suddenly had no income. Sixteen cancer patients in critical need of bone marrow for transplants were put at risk because the matching marrow could not be flown in from the United States or Canada.
In the past, jets flying into ash from volcanoes in the United States, Indonesia, the Philippines and Mexico have temporarily lost engine power, and in one case, dropped thousands of feet, although all managed to land safely. But there was no evidence that the more widely dispersed ash blowing over Europe from Iceland would cause similar problems. The decision to ground flights was based on the view that any level of ash in the atmosphere posed some risk to aircraft, and that no matter how slight that risk might be, the government’s job was, as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown put it, “to make sure that safety was paramount.”
Indeed, in closing their skies, European governments seem to have given safety absolute priority over everything else. Yet none of them act on that principle in other areas. Some 3,000 people die on the world’s roads every day. Cutting speed limits to, say, 10 kilometers per hour would prevent most accidents and save many lives. We don’t do it, because we give safety a lower priority than our desire to spend less time driving.
The price we are willing to pay for safety cannot be infinite. It is distasteful to put a price on human life, but the more we spend on safety the less we will have for our other goals. The British government uses a figure of a little more than ?1 million ($1.5 million) as a general limit to the amount it is prepared to pay to save a statistical life — for example, by improving road safety. In the United States, the Department of Transportation is prepared to go up to $5.8 million — nearly four times as much, at current exchange rates — for the same purpose. Does that mean that safety is paramount in the United States, but not in Britain?
Giovanni Bisignani, head of the International Air Transport Association, criticized the shutdown, saying that no risk assessment had been undertaken. On the whole, though, the public seemed to support the decision. Stranded travelers who were interviewed at airports typically said they would rather be stuck at an airport than in a plane falling out of the sky.
But what if some travelers have a higher tolerance of risk or just a more urgent need to travel than others? In his classic “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill considered a situation in which a man sets out to cross a bridge that we know is unsafe. In Mill’s view, we are justified in stopping him only to make sure that he is aware of the danger. Once he knows of it, the decision is his to make, because only he can judge the importance of his journey and balance that against the risk he is taking.
Air safety is slightly different because a crashing plane can kill people on the ground, but the greatest risks by far are borne by the passengers and crew. If they are fully informed of the risks and are still willing to fly — perhaps the crew has been offered more money, as workers in dangerous occupations often are — should we prevent them from making the decision to fly?
In the end, after test flights with no passengers aboard had shown no engine damage and after aircraft engine manufacturers told aviation authorities that their engines could operate safely with a low level of ash in the atmosphere, Europe’s skies were reopened. The International Civil Aviation Authority has announced that it will convene a group of experts to help it provide guidance for the industry to decide what level of ash in the atmosphere makes it unsafe to fly.
Now that we have seen the costs of giving absolute priority to safety, we know that this is not only a technical question. I trust that among the experts will be some who have pondered the underlying ethical question: How safe should we aim to be?
Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include “Practical Ethics,” “One World,” and most recently, “The Life You Can Save.” © Project Syndicate
TITLE: Bureaucrats Are More Harmful Than Volcanoes
AUTHOR: By Yulia Latynina
TEXT: During the height of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano crisis last week, air traffic over Europe was paralyzed, and losses to the air travel industry reached $200 million per day. European leaders and the U.S. president did not dare to fly to the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski.
And moralists made the expected banal statements about man’s insignificance before nature. But the more important issue is the idiocy of bureaucrats than the power of Mother Nature.
President Dmitry Medvedev calmly flew to Poland to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski. Medvedev’s security staff is very strict and conservative and would not have gambled with the president’s life if there were a real danger of flying through the volcanic ash. In addition, Lufthansa, KLM and British Airways all conducted test flights in the volcanic “danger zone” without experiencing a single mishap or malfunction.
The volcano erupted a month ago, but since air safety bureaucrats did not pay any attention to the explosion at first, no flights were canceled.
My goal here is not to discuss the technical details of exactly how high the concentration of volcanic ash is over Europe or how dangerous it is to fly. My point is that nobody knows these details. During the first week of the crisis, not a single specialized aircraft flew through the ash cloud, nor was a single weather balloon launched. Whenever we read the news about billion-dollar decisions, we naturally assume that they are made by a group of highly trained and experienced volcanic experts working with a huge amount of scientific data.
In reality, however, the decision to ground flights over Europe was not based on scientific data but on bureaucratic logic, which is really very simple: The more damage you do, the more important you are. Placing a ban on flights ensures that the problem will receive enormous attention — and, most important, billions of dollars in government grants for future study.
It took more than $1 billion in losses to the airline industry before the European Union transportation ministers held a video conference call to start discussing the problem. They then decided to open one-third of European air space, despite the fact that the volcano had just started erupting with four times greater force than before.
The hysteria over Eyjafjallajokull is by no means an isolated case. Recall the dire predictions from so-called “specialists” about the Y2K problem in the months leading up to Jan. 1, 2000. Or recall the “specialists” from the World Health Organization who created hysteria over the avian and swine flus — and before that, the Atypical Pneumonia scare.
And don’t forget the most powerful international bureaucracy— the millions of individuals and agencies dedicated to fighting global warming. They are trying for the second decade now to gain control over the entire global economy by scaring us to death with the increase of carbon dioxide, or greenhouse gases, in the atmosphere. But in so doing, they forget to mention that the burning of fossil fuels only releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that had already been there millions of years ago.
I suspect that problems such as swine flu and volcanic ash will only increase with time. If religion is the opiate of the masses, then science is the opiate of the bureaucrats.
Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.
TITLE: Everyday inspiration
AUTHOR: By Elmira Alieva
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Isaak Levitan’s legacy is the depiction of Russian nature in an unprecedented light. Many of the landscape painter’s predecessors had failed to find inspiration in Russia’s gray and dreary landscapes, preferring instead to imitate more colorful Italian and French paintings. Levitan (1860-1900) took a different approach. He found his inspiration in seemingly banal rural landscapes, which he filled with deep emotion and sentiment. He revealed the subtle beauty of Russian nature and presented similarities between placid rural landscapes and the soul of the Russian people. Perhaps it is this secret that has ensured Levitan’s enduring appeal throughout the generations.
Levitan is the latest leading Russian landscape master to be put in the spotlight in a series of exhibitions at the State Russian Museum, following other greats such as Savrasov, Kuindzhi and Shishkin. The current exhibition is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Levitan’s birth, and comprises nearly 100 works by the artist from the collections of the Russian Museum, Moscow’s State Tretyakov Gallery and the Isaak Brodsky apartment museum in St. Petersburg.
It is the first time in 50 years that such a large number of Levitan’s masterpieces have been displayed at the Russian Museum, according to the show’s organizers. The full collection of Levitan’s works from the Russian Museum and his celebrated canvases from the Tretyakov Gallery represent all the main periods of the artist’s life.
Levitan was a student of Alexei Savrasov, a landscape painter who created a lyrical landscape style. Levitan inherited and developed his mentor’s ideas by advancing the genre of the “mood landscape.” His first key painting, “Autumn day. Sokolniki” (1879) attracted the attention of Pavel Tretyakov, the eminent patron and collector of art, who soon began to buy Levitan’s canvases on a regular basis.
Time spent on the outskirts of Moscow played an important role in the artist’s professional development. One of the finest works from this period is “Autumn morning. Mist” (1886-1887), which was first purchased by Vasily Vereshchagin, a Russian painter of battle scenes. The main legacy of this period, however, is numerous sketches. Levitan worked a lot on sketches, and sometimes made several sketches of the same place in order to find the best viewpoint for his future paintings. The sketches now on display at the Russian Museum include those created during the first half of the 1880s, such as “Ostankino,” “Cherry tree” and “A hot day.”
Levitan’s health was not good, and in 1886, on doctors’ recommendations, he went to the Crimea, where he continued to paint. The beauty of the Crimea inspired Levitan, just as it had previously inspired Romantic poets and painters. Later, the Russian painter Mikhail Nesterov wrote that Levitan was the first to portray the beauty of the southern Crimea.
Upon his return from the Crimea, Levitan met Sofia Kuvshinnikova, the wife of a Moscow doctor. She became his student and friend, and would follow him for the next eight years. Levitan’s portrait of her is also on display at the exhibition. Kuvshinnikova was a notable figure — much of Moscow’s artistic intelligentsia gathered at her salon, including the Chekhov family.
The friendship between Levitan and the writer Anton Chekhov is an interesting page in the history of Russian culture. Chekhov valued Levitan as a landscape artist, and Levitan appreciated Chekhov as a great writer. A special epistolary section of the exhibition is devoted to the long-lasting friendship between Levitan and Chekhov, and reveals the artist’s complicated emotional state.
The Volga river landscapes painted by Levitan are among his best works. He was disappointed by his first trip to the Volga, as the scenery he saw seemed dull to him. A year later, however, he went there again, accompanied by Kuvshinnikova and the painter Stepavov. This trip proved to be very fruitful, and Levitan created his famous canvases “Evening. Golden Plios” (1889), “A Quiet Abode” (1890), and “Evening bells” (1892).
Levitan did not limit himself to painting Russian landscapes. He travelled to Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland in order to achieve a better understanding of the nature of other countries. There he created paintings such as “Spring in Italy” (1890), and also became interested in painting mountains, as illustrated by his work “Lake Como” (1894). He missed his native country when abroad, however, and spent the rest of his life glorifying ordinary Russian landscapes.
The next place to inspire Levitan was the Tverskoi region — the place that had once inspired Pushkin to write his unfinished play in verse, “The Water Nymph.” Levitan’s work from this period is full of sorrow. Levitan fell out with Chekhov for three years after the writer published his short story “The Fidget,” (1892) in which Levitan and Kuvshinnikova were clearly recognizable. In 1894 he created his epic, philosophical “Above Eternal Peace” (1894). It was a painting full of the artist’s meditations about the contradictions of life and the transience of human life.
1894 was a difficult year for the artist. After parting ways with Kuvshinnikova and learning he was seriously ill, Levitan made an unsuccessful suicide attempt. Parodoxically, his creative work appeared to get a new lease of life. He painted “March” (1895), one of his most optimistic paintings. Little by little, however, his paintings became increasingly gray and sad, reflecting both the northern tones of the scenes he painted and the degradation of his health.
Levitan wanted to call his last work “Russia,” but changed his mind and instead called it “The Lake” (1899-1900). The painting was not finished. It is highly symbolic that his last landscape — the distant shores of a large bright lake, a church and clouds floating above the water — was originally to have been baptized “Russia.” Perhaps for the artist it represented the Russia that Levitan wanted to see, and that he wanted to entrust to future generations.
“Isaak Levitan: 1860 – 1900” runs through July 15 at the Benois Wing of the Russian Museum. Nab. Kanala Griboyedova 2, tel: 595-42-48. M: Nevsky Prospekt. www.rusmuseum.ru
TITLE: Chernov’s choice
TEXT: The local scene has begun a revival after the winter, which proved cruel to a number of venues, in particular the clubs located in a former Soviet taxi park on Konyushennaya Ploshchad that had to close in January because the building’s owner had different plans for the premises. Achtung Baby, Mod and BubbleBar have since been either looking for a new location or renovating whatever premises they have managed to find.
Mila Skvortsova, art director of the recently opened Hallelujah Bar, said it is not a substitute for Achtung Baby, of which she was also art director, but rather something with which to occupy herself until a new location is found.
“Because I’m also working there, it’ll be similar in format, because it’s the format that I like and where I feel good and I’ll be happy with what I’m doing,” Skvortsova (aka DJ Starling) said, describing the place’s approach as “European-St. Petersburg.” According to her, the bar will host nightly performances by DJs spinning indie and dance rock records, as well as occasional concerts and art-house film screenings.
Hallelujah Bar opened on April 9 with a live concert by Yotatoy, a new band formed by producer and musician Andrei Samsonov.
More concerts are planned, but Skvortsova said their frequency and whether they would be free or not depended on attendance.
“It was packed at the opening, but on the next day, which was Saturday, there was almost nobody there,” Skvortsova said.
“But it happened to be the first warm day for some time and people were happily drinking right on the street, while our bartenders were wondering, ‘What’s happening, why is nobody coming?’”
Situated in the rooms formerly occupied by El Barrio and then the second incarnation of Tsypa, Hallelujah Bar is located at 7 Inzhenernaya Ulitsa, 350 meters from Gostiny Dvor metro.
Recoil, a music project created by former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder, will perform at a venue called Jagger at 8 p.m. on Sunday. The concert is part of Recoil’s “‘Selected’ Events 2010 — A Strange Hour With Alan Wilder & Paul Kendall” tour in support of the new compilation album “Selected.”
The upcoming Russian tour, which also includes Moscow, will be Recoil’s first.
“Following our reports from the road about travel ordeals and flight cancellations, some Russian fans have been concerned that Recoil might not make it to Russia — please don’t worry! Everything will be going ahead as planned,” wrote Wilder on the band’s web site this week.
Jagger is located at 2 Ploshchad Konstitutsii in the southwest of St. Petersburg; the nearest metro is Moskovskaya, tel.: 923 1292.
Other concerts of note this week include seminal local art rockers Auktsyon (Glavclub, Friday), the extreme-disco band Pep-See (Zoccolo, Friday) and great garage-rock band Chufella Marzufella (Chinese Pilot Dzhao Da, Sunday).
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Old meets new
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The final performances last weekend of this year’s Mariinsky International Ballet Festival were full of rewarding novelties and great dancing. The festival, celebrating its 10th anniversary, closed triumphantly last Sunday night with its traditional gala featuring international stars.
The gala opened with a dark and somber Philip Glass ballet, “Immortal Beloved,” choreographed by the New York choreographer Edwaard Liang for Mariinsky star Igor Zelensky. Zelensky, as in last year’s gala, brought along dancers from the Novosibirsk Ballet which he directs. Liang’s choreography was assured and showed off Zelensky extremely well.
Liang also created a ballet for the festival in the New Generation evening on April 23. This ambitious program included three premieres, all of which were reasonably short and concise. All three creations, which were rather gloomy, seemed to have a subtext that wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the program notes.
Liang’s work “Flight of Angels” set to Baroque music had a male protagonist suffering from some mental affliction, loosely based on the play “The Madness of King George III.” Leonid Sarafanov agonized for most of the ballet, but had passages to dazzle the audience with his virtuosity, while Olesia Novikova was his muse in a duet toward the end. The other male dancers were also displayed pretty well in Liang’s choreography, especially Kirill Safin and Filipp Steppin, but somehow this piece wasn’t as sharply focused or satisfying as Liang’s earlier work, “Immortal Beloved,” on the closing night.
The opening work “Bolero Factory” and the second work “Simple Things” both featured a ballerina and a retinue of seven men. “Bolero Factory” was a good opening piece created by Mariinsky Ballet soloist Yury Smekalov, who is also developing as a choreographer. The set was a giant windmill with a staircase. Viktoria Tereshkina was superb as the white-clad central figure gradually corrupted by the seven deadly sins depicted by the men. Anton Korsakov danced wickedly as Gluttony and Alexander Sergeyev sported a punk hairstyle as Greed. The men’s costumes, designed by Tatyana Noginova, were simple and striking in bold colors. The ensemble passages with Tereshkina being lifted and forcefully handled by the seven men were effective, as was the ending when she ascended to the top of the staircase and jumped down to commit suicide.
The evening’s most satisfying premiere was the second work, “Simple Things,” created by Emil Faski, a St. Petersburg-born choreographer now working in Germany. The ballerina was a heroine figure reminiscent of Joan of Arc, who in the last section appeared to be burnt at the stake against a backdrop depicting a flame. Yekaterina Kondaurova was excellent in this role, particularly in the long meditative solo set to Arvo Part. Faski’s choreography displayed the virtuosity of the seven attendant men, the most prominent of whom was Maxim Zyuzin.
As in previous years, the gala included Balanchine masterpieces. In “Rubies,” Yekaterina Kondaurova was electrifying as the tall female soloist, while Helene Bouchet from Hamburg Ballet glittered as the main ballerina. The male soloist, Andrian Fadeyev, recently recovered from a long injury, was however dancing with more strain than before.
Balanchine’s “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux,” included in the divertissements section, was impeccably danced by Viktoria Tereshkina. Vladimir Shklyarov was impressive, though his phrasing was rather choppy and rushed at times.
Another virtuosic duet was Gzovsky’s “Grand Pas Classique,” newly staged for the Mariinsky by Sergei Vikharev. Leonid Sarafanov danced with seemingly effortless ease, making it a worthwhile addition to the repertory.
Contrasting these technical fireworks were some expressive divertissements, including an interesting novelty for the Mariinsky — a male duet from Roland Petit’s “Proust.” David Hallberg from the American Ballet Theater was imposing as the dark angel, while Denis Matviyenko was the pure angelic figure Saint Loup. Royal Ballet star Alina Cojocaru, a favorite of the St. Petersburg public, was strongly partnered by Martin Vedel Jacobsen from Bejart Ballet Lausanne in a duet from “Rushes” by Kim Brandstrup.
Saturday saw a splendid performance by the Mariinsky troupe of “The Sleeping Beauty,” in Konstantin Sergeyev’s Soviet version. It is always more rewarding to see this classic danced in full scope on the Mariinsky stage where it was created in 1890 than on overseas tours where there are inevitably cuts. David Hallberg as the Prince and Alina Somova in the title role were a well-matched partnership which will hopefully be repeated.
TITLE: Home comforts
AUTHOR: By Sasha de Vogel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Sennaya Ploshchad just isn’t what it used to be. The riff-raff and undesirable characters are (mostly) gone, edged out by the shimmering facade of the Pik shopping mall, innumerable blini and shaverma stands and endless pedestrian traffic. The square is now an awkward conglomeration of consumerism and trashiness, with little of its former character remaining. But if you head a bit west, over to the Griboyedov Canal, you’ll find an area that has yet to be sucked into the vortex of the square, where a few trees and unpretentious eateries occupy the quiet street. Here, on the periphery of Sennaya Ploshchad, Gosti serves up appropriately schizophrenic cuisine, equal parts down-home warmth and glitzy flash.
The decor gives the impression that Gosti occupies a once-rustic cottage, whose owners have recently come into a large amount of money to misguidedly invest in d?cor. Metallic floral wallpaper and a pizza oven decorate the dining room for smokers, while the non-smoking section has reflective cream-colored walls and plush armchairs. Still, something of the rustic remains, like the incongruous brick and painted stonework. Small, high windows look out onto the street from the below-ground restaurant, creating a quaint and cozy feeling. From the quiet speakers flows an unusual mix of music that includes pop hits, Russian music, and, exotically, obscure American indie rock.
During our dinner, by far the most out-of-place addition to the eclectic ambiance was the prominently placed television that was set to Animal Planet. While the scenes of whales playfully leaping through the ocean were pleasant, the show that followed, wherein animal protection services rescued abused dogs and performed necessary medical treatment, did not enhance the dining experience.
The Russian-Italian fusion menu of Gosti is similarly eclectic, ranging from beer snacks to pizza to more obscure options, like deer and rabbit. The eggplant appetizer was a toothsome take on the classic eggplant Parmesan, pairing tough slabs of eggplant with a spicy tomato paste topping and a sprinkle of cheese (200 rubles, $6.80). Gosti’s menu also offers an impressive array of salads that, in the European style, feature lettuce instead of mayonnaise. The salad with balsamic grilled shrimp, roasted cherry tomatoes and avocado (200 rubles, $6.80) was a refreshingly light and acidic start to a meal. The baguette basket (60 rubles, $2.00) with three colors of butter (garlic, pesto and tomato) was a disappointment; there appeared to be more butter than bread, making the wafer-thin slices soggy, and despite the flavored infusions, the butter barely tasted like anything at all — butter included.
The entrees were considerably more satisfying. The tender beef medallions (250 rubles, $8.50) served in gravy came with green beans and perfectly greasy pan-fried potatoes, drizzled with basil oil, and needed no side dish. The long, narrow strip of salmon fillet (300 rubles, $10.25) arrived topped with a row of steamed snow peas carefully layered, scale-like, on top, and was floating in a puddle of creamy white wine sauce. The mixed rice side dish — a blend of white, wild, brown and red grains — made an excellent compliment (80 rubles, $2.75). Dishes with a more Italian flair are also available, including two pizza options and a variety of traditional-style pastas, like Carbonara (240 rubles, $8.20).
While Gosti is a nice place to spend a casual evening, serious drinkers requiring an extensive wine card or cocktail menu may want to look elsewhere. Gosti has a moderate selection of beer and a surprising number of whiskeys, but wine-wise offers only house red, white and port (150 rubles a glass, $5.12).
Quirks and all, Gosti is a pleasant respite from the regular hubbub of the city. In spite of the interior d?cor’s delusions of grandeur, Gosti is a cut above the average Russian home-style restaurant.
TITLE: U.K.’s Brown Apologizes Following Gaffe
AUTHOR: By Andy Drake
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: LONDON — Britain’s final TV election debate Thursday may be Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s last chance to repair his tarnished reputation, after an open microphone caught him dismissing an elderly Labour voter as a “bigoted woman.”
Brown’s campaign gaffe — dragged out for hours on television with him finally going back to the woman’s house to apologize — dominated the news. But candidates on Thursday have to tackle an even thornier issue — how to kick-start Britain’s sluggish economy amid deepening economic troubles in Europe.
And with Britain’s three main candidates neck-and-neck ahead of the May 6 national election, the country appears headed toward a hung parliament in which no group holds a majority and urgently needed decisions on the economy may be delayed by the need to build coalitions.
Britain’s first-ever televised debates, three in all, have already spurred an unexpected transformation in the country’s politics. Nick Clegg, leader of the perennially third-place Liberal Democrats, has turned in two sparkling performances, shocking the election’s two heavyweights, Brown of the governing Labour Party and David Cameron of the Conservatives.
The Liberal Democrats have even leapfrogged over Labour into the second spot in many recent surveys.
But the most decisive TV debate could come Thursday, with the toxic topic of the economy. Britain has struggled through a deep 18-month recession in which around 1.3 million people have been laid off and 50,000 families have had their homes repossessed.
Whoever governs Britain after the May 6 vote must quickly tame a mammoth 152.84 billion pounds ($235.9 billion) deficit racked up during the global financial crisis. Britain will likely suffer the largest cuts to public services since World War II, taxes are sure to rise and efforts to cut unemployment will take time.
“It really is the defining issue of the campaign — so we’ll have to hope that they will finally be nailed down on the subject,” said Howard Archer, chief U.K. economist at IHS Global Insight.
Archer said all three main parties have been so far reluctant to give “the gruesome details” of the budget trimming and economic constraints that lie ahead.
“Of course, they’re not particularly vote-winning policies,” he said.
After a bruising 24 hours, Brown appeared grateful to take on what has long been his strongest subject.
“Yesterday was yesterday,” Brown said, referring to his embarrassing flub. “Today I want to talk about the future of the economy.”
He promised to use the debate to remind voters of his handling of the economic storm and to discuss fears that Greece’s debt crisis could spread through Europe. Currencies and stock markets tumbled Wednesday on fears over Athens’ plight.
Brown vowed to focus on “how our economy can move through what are difficult times, given what we see happening in the rest of Europe, in Greece and elsewhere.”
His rivals too were careful not to exploit Brown’s mishap. “The words speak for themselves — I’ll leave that to others,” said Cameron.
“He’s apologized, he’s explained why what happened happened, and I’m certainly not going to start commenting,” said Clegg.
In two weeks since the first debate, Clegg has emerged as a credible new contender to lead Britain — shaking up the dominance of Labour and the Conservatives, the two major parties who have traded power since the 1930s.
TITLE: Navy Called In to Clear Oil Spill
AUTHOR: By Janet McConnaughey, Michael Kunzelman, Brett Martel, Melinda Deslatte and Holbrook Mohr
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW ORLEANS — A massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is even worse than believed and as the government grows concerned that the rig’s operator is ill-equipped to contain it, officials are offering a military response to try to avert a massive environmental disaster along the ecologically fragile U.S. coastline.
Speaking Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show, an executive for BP PLC, which operated the oil rig that exploded and sank last week, said the company would welcome help from the U.S. military.
“We’ll take help from anyone,” BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said.
But time may be running out. Not only was a third leak discovered — which government officials said is spewing five times as much oil into the water than originally estimated — but it might be closer to shore than previously known, and could have oil washing up on shore by Friday.
At the same time, there appeared to be a rift developing between BP and the Coast Guard, which is overseeing the increasingly desperate operation to contain the spill and clean it up.
Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry was emphatic at a hastily called news conference late Wednesday that the new leak was discharging 5,000 barrels a day of sweet crude, not the 1,000 barrels officials had estimated for days since the Deepwater Horizons drilling rig exploded and sank 50 miles off the Louisiana Coast.
Suttles disputed at the same news conference with Landry that the amount of oil spilling into the water had ballooned — or at the company wasn’t able to handle the ongoing operation to contain it.
But early Thursday, he said on “Today” that the leak may be as high as the government’s new estimate. He said there was no way to measure the flow at the seabed and estimates have to come from seeing how much oil makes it to the surface.
“Using the satellite imagery and our overflights, we can now say it looks like it’s more than a thousand. It’s a range,” Suttles said. He said the range was up to 5,000 barrels a day.
The Secretary of Homeland Security has briefed President Barack Obama on this new information and the government has offered to have the Department of Defense use its equipment and expertise to help contain the spill and protect the U.S. coastline and wildlife, Landry said.
“It has become clear after several unsuccessful attempts to determine the cause” that agencies must supplement what’s being done by the company, she said.
This all played out at the end of a long day as crews began an experiment to burn off parts of the slick — the latest in a series of high- and low-tech efforts to stop the oil leak, reel in as much of the oil as possible to prevent it from washing ashore and harming the fragile wildlife and plant life that dot the coast.
TITLE: EU Nears Deal On Greece Aid
AUTHOR: By Juergen Baetz
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BRUSSELS — European and German officials assured markets they were working quickly on approving a bailout for Greece as they try to keep the country’s debt crisis from dragging others into a continent-wide financial meltdown.
European Union monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn said Thursday he was “confident the talks will be concluded in the next days.”
He said negotiators from the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary fund were “working day and night” and were nearing an agreement on “a multiannual program” that will include major changes in Greece.
Rehn said the financial lifeline was being put together to avoid a wider crisis and was “for every euro area member state and their citizens, to safeguard the financial stability in Europe and globally.”
Rehn’s appearance at the European Commission’s daily news briefing appeared to be designed to reassure financial markets that the money will come through and a Greek government debt default was not on the cards — the markets have been in turmoil over the last few days as the seemingly never-ending Greek crisis threatened to drag other countries like Portugal and Spain into the mire.
TITLE: Thai Activists Demand Military Action Against Protests
AUTHOR: By Grant Peck
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: BANGKOK — Thailand’s pro-establishment activists demanded military action against anti-government protesters and an end to “anarchy” in the capital Thursday, a day after clashes turned a busy expressway into a deadly battle zone.
The re-emergence of the so-called Yellow Shirts — notorious for shutting Bangkok’s airports for a week in 2008 — added to the volatility on the streets of the Thai capital, where a seven-week standoff has killed at least 27 people and wounded nearly 1,000.
Chamlong Srimuang, one of the top Yellow Shirt leaders, has suggested that martial law be implemented — which would hand over most state functions to the military — and called on the army to stop the protesters on its own if the government would not, warning that otherwise civil war might ensue.
The crisis also spilled into the diplomatic arena, with the foreign minister chastizing diplomats based here for interfering in Thailand’s internal affairs.
The Yellow Shirts draw their support from Thailand’s business and bureaucratic elite, whose pervasive influence is deeply resented by the Red Shirts — supported by the rural and urban poor who make up the vast majority of the country’s more than 60 million people.
The current bout of unrest is the culmination of a four-year political standoff following the 2006 ouster of populist former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in a military coup. Thaksin is a hero for the Red Shirts, but is loathed by the Yellow camp. The Red Shirts are seeking the resignation of current Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva — whose government they viewed as supported by the military and illegitimate — and fresh elections.
The crisis has hurt business in the capital and devastated Thailand’s vital tourist industry, which accounts for 6 percent of the economy. The Red Shirts have turned parts of Bangkok’s commercial heart into a protest camp, forcing the closure of some of the city’s ritziest malls and hotels.
On Thursday, Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya censured some envoys for meeting last week with Red Shirt leaders.
“We do not want to see that happening again,” Kasit told reporters during a visit to Jakarta, Indonesia. Kasit said he had earlier met with the Philippine Ambassador Antonio V. Rodriguez, the dean of the Bangkok diplomatic corps, to express his concern.
In a note to other diplomats based in Thailand, Rodriguez said Kasit accused some ambassadors of voicing opposition to the constitutional monarchy and criticizing the government’s handling of the crisis. Kasit was a public supporter of the Yellow Shirt movement before becoming foreign minister.
“These actions have gone beyond the limits of diplomatic practice and were unacceptable to the Thai government,” was how his note summarized Kasit’s position. “The envoys’ opposition to the government and to the monarchy was inappropriate and will not be tolerated.”
Thailand’s king is nearly universally revered, and laws severely restrict discussion of him.
In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters Wednesday that U.S. diplomats are “intensively engaged in discussions” with Thai government officials and with opposition forces.
“Our message remains what it has been since this situation evolved, which is to peacefully resolve the situation,” he said.
A statement from the European Union said EU Ambassador David Lipman met briefly with the protesters and called for “constructive dialogue and a negotiated solution to the current political crisis.”
Yellow Shirt rallies were held Thursday at military bases nationwide with the main gathering in Bangkok outside the 11th Infantry Regiment, where Abhisit has stayed since the Red Shirts launched protests in mid-March.
“The crisis in Thailand has rapidly and intensively spread and become a state of anarchy,” said a petition handed by leaders of the Yellow Shirts — formally known as the People’s Alliance for Democracy — to representatives of the government and army.